MODERN ALCHEMY. 147 



transient existence as a true element, that he proposes to 

 give it a definite name as an element so that it may take 

 its place with others in the Table of the Elements. He 

 has called it exradio, the element evolved out of radium. 



" There is just one thing more/' .says our sceptical 

 chemist, "that I can fairly ask you to do. These trans- 

 muted elements, such as your emanation, are new. Evolve 

 me, now, an element that we know, and I shall be an 

 alchemist." 



We shall do it. In June, 1903, about one year prior to 

 the discovery alluded to above, Sir William Ramsay and 

 Mr. Soddy discovered that this radium emanation decayec 1 

 into, or became transmuted into, an entirely different ele- 

 ment with which the world of science has been acquainted 

 for years, namely, the element helium. By observing 

 through a spectroscope a spectrum-tube containing the ra- 

 dium emanation, they were able to observe the actual 

 birth of helium. At first, no spectrum lines characteristic 

 of helium were observed; but presently they appeared, 

 faint at first but ever increasing in brightness until they 

 became unmistakable, and the birth of helium was an ac- 

 complished fact. Helium has been a well-known element 

 ever since its discovery on the sun by Lockyer twenty-five 

 years ago, and its subsequent discovery on earth by Ram- 

 say in 1895. We have discovered that it is a transmuta- 

 tion product of the element radium. 



" Well," says our chemist, sceptical no longer and with 

 all the humour of his class/"! am like Kipling's elephant 

 when the alligator had him by the nose. ' This is too buch 

 for be.' " 



And so, in truth, it is. 



We have learned, then, without the use of any theoreti- 

 cal conceptions, and as a matter of simple fact, that cer- 



